Israel - Operation Olive Branch (Proposed)

If you join a peace group or two, as I have--how could I not, reconstructing Jew that I am?--there may be some expectations about one's good faith efforts as regards encouraging a defensible, fair, and lasting peace for Israel.

My out: if Clinton couldn't do it, far be it from me to try for a better result; however, with that disclaimer in mind, a citizen, unlike a United States President, need not solve all at once and with decision.

This past October, Israeli settlers marred the harvest of olives by traditional farmers in groves within settlement security zones in the West Bank.  As the whole is contested land, and the representing governments refuse yet to recognize Israel and produce a peace -- not a de facto agreement, not a truce, but peace -- the settlers, at least some, seem to have presumed themselves sufficiently free to revert to a 19th Century American pioneer and fence wars mentality and proving it gone out to "shoo" the farmers with gun butts as well as, heard tell above, bullets.

Israel's courts would seem to beg to differ about the true character of the territories, and have called on the IDF to defend the harvest (if exception to settlement security perimeters has been made for the harvesting of olives by farmer-refugees, then it would seem incumbent on Israel's part to secure the harvesters from harm).

At the same time, the harvest would seem an event in which the Palestinian Authority has direct interest in the welfare of its constituents and their agricultural productivity, so it too may assert itself by joining with Israel to ensure the security of the harvest.

I propose for the next olive harvest around the West Bank settlements the fielding of joint IDF-PA patrols, assembled at a common point, set out in the same vehicles, charged with the same mission: to discourage attacks on harvesters.

Nothing need be implied about the final disposition of the land, the development of settlements, or the restructuring of separation-by-design (generally for good defensive reasons) elements and protocols in the West Bank, but the same would test and prove the abilities of the opposed leaderships to produce cooperation over common and well-founded values.

Should such a small cooperative mission fail and gun slinging in the groves lead to more mud slinging at the podium and in the press, then, yawn, what else is new? 

Lay the same on the heap of failures defining the Middle East Conflict since Oslo--and no worry, there will be similar other small opportunities through which to develop telling partnerships, however brief, and testing in both camps the want of peace.

Reference

Sorcher, Sarah.  "The Olive Grove Wars."  Global Post, October 22, 2009: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/israel-and-palestine/091021/olive-harvest-israel-palestinian-settler-jewish-peace

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